Opiate of the Masses

As long as I'm responding to The Fiendish One, I also take note of this post in which he recommends a couple of books by Karen Armstrong, one on the history of monotheistic religion (which I own, but have not yet read) and one on the rise of fundamentalism (which I neither own nor have read). Matt suggests that Jessica Stern (the author of the book on terrorism I'm reading, see below) needs to read Armstong's book The Battle for God (the one on fundamentalism); I've just found that very volume cited in her endnotes, so I can only assume she has in fact read it.

Of course, I don't think Matt meant that in a "snarky" way, so I should note that understanding why fundamentalism comes to exists does not quite explain why terrorism comes to exist. There are a lot more fundamentalists in this world than there are terrorists, and while some religious aspect inspires many terrorists, I don't think that the religious element is sufficient to do so. What Stern seems to be investigating is what leads the strongly religious to become militantly religious. (I say "seems to be" because, as noted below, I'm only a short way into the book.)